Sighting Puget Sound orcas in the winter

Published 10:00 pm, Wednesday, December 17, 2003

For those who want to see whales in Puget Sound, the experts have two pieces of advice:

Hang around Vashon Island.

Get lucky.

"In the winter, it's total luck," said Kari Koski, who runs the Boater Education Program for The Whale Museum in Friday Harbor. Sightings do happen, but whale-watchers have to be in the right place at the right time, she said.

For Puget Sound-area residents, the right place in the winter is Vashon Island, which the 22 members of the J Pod circle as they feed on late-run chum salmon, said Howard Garrett, board president of Orca Network.

The Web site of the Greenbank whale advocacy group is routinely updated with whale sightings from the region. A map labels sightings by date and type -- resident whale or transient whale -- and spotters describe where they saw the orcas.

Four spotters saw whales between Dec. 3 and 11, two near Vashon Island and two near Alki. There were five others seen this month on the northeast side of Vancouver Island and one in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

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Near the end of last week, 30 people watched from the shore near the Point Robinson Lighthouse on Vashon Island as a pod passed, with some of the whales breaching.

Those who want to get out on the water have limited options in the winter.

Tom McMillen runs one of the only Seattle boats that takes passengers for winter whale-watching.

"Orcas are funny. They don't ever stay anywhere very long. Even when there are a lot of fish around, they go in and feed and then move on. They rarely stay anywhere more than a couple of hours," said McMillen, owner of Salish Sea Charters. This is the third winter season for the tour company, whose boat leaves from Ballard.

The whale experts do not know where the orcas spend all their time in the winter, although reported sightings are helping them to figure that out. They do know that the resident pods -- the J, K and L pods -- stay in the region until February. The J pod spends more time in the South Sound than the other two.

The resident pods eat only fish and follow the salmon, Garrett said. The transient whales also eat other marine animals, including seals and sea lions. "There are orcas in other parts of the world, but there is no place that is so hospitable as far as being able to see them from the shore of a huge urban area," Garrett said of the Puget Sound region.